Conte dictates the conditions on TV: “We allies of Schlein if he gives up caciques and chieftains”

Milano — Dice Giuseppe Contetalking about Elly Schlein: «If you wanted to keep faith with the commitment made in March 2023 when you were confirmed as secretary with the cry of “I will free the Democratic Party from capos and caciques”, you would find the greatest partner in me». The president of the M5S dictates his line from the studio friend of Agreements and disagreements on the Nine and it seems like a tape rewinding, as happened less than two years ago: elections on the horizon, 5S in difficulty and Giuseppe Conte raising the stakes (and finally tearing up).

Two years ago it was all the fault – it was said at that juncture, but it was a half-excuse and everyone knew it – of the Rome waste-to-energy plant, the then PD secretary Enrico Letta he considered everything a kind of betrayal, every man for himself and the right won the Politics by a landslide; now there is the Bari affair, objectively tangled for everyone and which creates a lot of embarrassment in the Democratic Party itself, a story which however allows the M5S, by renouncing the primaries, to withdraw from the broad field, or almost so. At least for now, the time it takes to get to the European elections for Garibaldi as in the old days and not trapped and weakened in a structural center-left alliance which, as the numbers say, is not good for the Movement. “It’s one thing to find yourself on June 9th with us at 11 percent and the Democratic Party at 22, it’s another to do it with us at 16-17 and them at 20”, is the simple reflection which, with notebooks closed, does more than one in the 5 Stars. From the series: it’s not out of malice, but everyone brings grist to his mill.

To beat the right in 2027, or whenever it will be, the alliance is obligatory and no one really questions it, but how to get there and with what balance of power is a completely different matter. The flag of legality waved by Conte, moreover, is in the DNA of the party he has led since 2021. And the Apulian news, including the sensational own goal by Michele Emiliano who in the square at a rally had told of a meeting he had organized between the outgoing mayor Antonio Decaro and the sister of a Bari Vecchia boss, provided excellent support. As luck would have it, so to speak, the M5S announced yesterday the regional coordinator’s candidacy for president of Piedmont Sarah Disabato, run alone, that is by opponents of the centre-left, just the day after another scandal involving the local Democratic Party, another matter of buying and selling votes and favors and which could spread. For the occasion the vice president Chiara Appendinonow the real number 2 of the Movement and even more convinced of the choice than Conte himself, has unleashed words that seem to have been dredged up from the ancient rhetorical baggage of a Movement against everything and everyone, and which in that capacity had found itself to be the first force Italian politics: «It is unthinkable that, in a sick Piedmont, whoever was the cause of this evil, center-right and center-left, could be the one who gives the right recipe».

So here we are again, a people’s lawyer who breaks rites and unwritten rules, claims his unwillingness to be tamable, places political conditions on his quasi-allies. To be competitive, like M5S and as the “right field”, the former Prime Minister demands more protagonism, the same that led him to impose Alessandra Todde in Sardinia. Clear candidacies, breaking with the past considered consociational with the Democratic Party, or nothing to do. «To say that the M5S and I favor the right is sick and flawed reasoning. Perhaps it is the political scandals, when they exist, that favor the right”, the former prime minister always explains on television. And then: do voters “want the status quo to be maintained or a progressive force for renewal to be relaunched”, in Bari as in Italy? The next step to take, pondered but not yet decided, is the exit of the 5S from the Apulian regional council led by Emiliano. It concerns only one department, that of Welfare, but the symbolic value of such a choice would be very strong. It would certainly be a welcome move for a part of the M5S electorate: «I’m not anticipating anything – says Conte sibillinely – it will be a revolution: we will be even more ambitious».